Posts Tagged ‘plastic’

[UPDATE: Herb Caen eventually recanted re: the Frisco Issue – see Comments. Or here’s the short version:“Balderdash,” Caen wrote. “The toughest guys on the old S.F. waterfront, neither rubes nor tourists, called it Frisco, and no effete journalist would have tried to correct them.”]

This baggie system is news to me, as I’m accustomed to the Big Orange Bucket:

“Residents of multi-unit homes (4 units or more) should place batteries in their Orange Battery Bucket. If your building does not have one, ask your building manager to order one at (415) 330-1300. For more information on battery recycling, please visit: SFEnvironment.org/ecofinder

1. Perhaps the RPD spokesmodel meant that the entire slide complex was being repaired, as opposed to the $2000 plastic slide itself. I don’t think it would have made sense to repair the slide itself, due to liability issues for starters. This is a brand-new slide, one that’s similar enough to the original.

2. So some wealthy, non-profit people came by with clipboards to say that this particular playground currently earns a “D” grade? Well, OK fine, but if you talk to the people who actually use the place, they, more or less, give it an “A” grade, you know, except for the slide that wasn’t there all summer long. Mmmmm… What’s up with that?

3. Supervisor London Breed’s office was unresponsive to the email contact sent by a group of concerned parents, apparently. So she gets an “F,” or an Incomplete perhaps. (I’ve worked at two similar offices, with about ten or one hundred times as many constituents, and if the elected in charge found out about something like this then there’d be a 20-minute yell-fest and/or a passive aggressive note sent to a (lower-case “s”) supervisor to “fix this.”) So, obvs, a “communication issue” occurred, I just don’t know how common this is with her office.

4. RPD has a policy to not repair anything in a playground if it’s due to be revamped in the next two years? That’s my understanding. Does that mean that this playground won’t get revamped anytime soon? That’s my understanding. Why’s that? Read on, Gentle Reader.

5. What RPD really wants is area parents to get together to raise something on the order of [bites right pinkie finger] one million dollars, you know, the way they do things in rich areas of SF, like Sea Cliff (ala the new Mountain Lake) and Presidio Heights. Only then will RPD put your playground at the top of the fix-it list? OK fine. The funny thing is that most of the money that gets used to refurbish existing playgrounds is paid for by the non-rich, from some bond. But all this doesn’t matter for the playground at hand, because:

6. The slide vandalized in May 2014 has been replaced in September 2014 and the users are now satisfied. No $5,000,000 modernization from the RPD is needed, frankly. [Oh what’s that, RPD – this old-school playground costs you a lot of coin to maintain? Well, then why don’t you fix it up, RPD, you know, using the money we give you?]

Now I’m just assuming that the hole was the result of vandalism, but I don’t figure how else it could have happened.

(Can I blame SFGov for the hole? Nope. Not at all.)

(Can I find fault with how SFGov was/is handling the issue? Nope. Not at all.)

IMO, fixing these slides proper would be a big job, so simply getting another big old piece of plastic might be the best course of action. And that might take a while. I’m figuring a resolution by the end of July is reasonable – sorry kids.

This isn’t literally on Haight Street – it’s on the short road drivers use to get from Haight Street to the McDonalds parking lot next to Amoeba Records. This is where cars would drive thru if this store had a drive-thru window.

I guess the pavement suffices when employees need a place to put the buns down temporarily:

Click to expand

(Next time I pass through, I’ll check to see if they still offer the McDouble at the loss-leader, giveaway price of just a dollar. McDonaldsese’s Dollar Menu has been updated nationally recently, and some local franchises have used that opportunity to raise McDouble prices to $1.29. This particular franchise on Haight Street was famous a couple of years back for banishing the Dollar Menu in order to, purportedly, cut down on the general hippie/streetkid population in the area.)